The enclosure developed by repkid is a simple wooden box made from thin MDF sheets and wooden beams structure. It is insulated by double-ply cardboard glued to the inside of the box. To prevent ABS warping it is heated by simple household hair dryer.

Parts printed inside the heated enclosure on the left, and ABS part printed without heated chamber on the right with warping.

The enclosure with printer inside it

Lasercut thermal vents. They can be done with simple hand tools also

Heater made from simple hair dryer

More advanced version of the enclosure with fumes extractor

Heated chambers for 3d printing are patented by some corporation and I'm not sure what implications patent law has on projects like this one ...

Cheap, simple and effective 3d printer enclosure made from two plastic boxes by rjacobsson.
He used Ikea boxes, but I think it will work with any plastic container and keep temperature of your print volume constant and elevated from surrounding.
It also reduces the noise and contains the fumes.
Like any enclosure without thermostat it overheat the motors but you should experiment until you discover what works best for you.

Mar 27, 2014

Current state of intellectual property rights needs urgent reform. Period. This is short video report about some issues. Julie Samuels from EFF and Cyndi Tetro speak about some potential problems.
Personally, I'm going to print whatever I want ...

Nomad is project in development of modular 3d printable aircraft measuring one meter in wingspan powered by electric motor. Future versions will be up to 50% larger and able to carry a GoPro camera in their nose.

This is the Nomad, a new design I'm working on for a travel UAV/FPV airplane. This version has a wingspan of almost one meter, so it's relatively small. After I've completed and test flown I plan to make a 30/50% larger version to carry a GoPro camera in the nose for aerial photography.The airplane is meant to be modular, the nose and tail sections are joined to the center section with nylon screws, the wings and stabilizers are detachable and even the wing panels can be kept separate to simplify repairs and testing new design ideas.

The wing sections are meant to be printed in a "Spiral Vase" mode, the internal spars and/or printing settings should be adjusted so that the printing head makes the spars by moving in from the bottom of the wing until touching the inner surface of the top of the wing, so there is only one seam at the bottom.

I have carefully modeled the fuselage parts so that most of them will print as a two perimeter shell using a 0.4mm nozzle, except where more thickness is needed.

Mar 26, 2014

Cathal Garvey created well known Dremel / drill low cost centrifuge "Dremelfuge". Here is interview with him where he describes various possibilities of his work. It could help bring more advanced medicine and science to developing world for fraction of the cost of conventional equipment while being open source.
Biohacking is expanding everywhere, workshops are held even in my country of Croatia. 3d printed tools like this could help people everywhere to get economically viable equipment.

... not so funny, but I'm certain that in future some major player will lock their machine to prevent printing of open source printer parts ... and there will be companies who will go bankrupt from additive manufacturing developments ...

Mar 23, 2014

Asiga Pico is specialist 3d printer with size of a small kitchen countertop appliance. It is designed with jewelry, dental and medical industry in mind. It produces wax polymer casting for metal parts or uses medical grade biocompatible resin for things like hearing aids. It is priced at USD 6990. It comes with Asiga Composer software.

The Pico is the first 3D printer of its kind to use a solid state UV LED light source. The LED lifetime is up to 50,000 hours and is not classed as a consumable, unlike other systems. The result is consistent curing from layer to layer, day after day, year after year. UV light allows broader materials choices, such as water-clear and pure white materials.

The Pico now has an improved resolution of 39 micron pixel size with a build envelope of 40 x 30mm (X and Y), and a build height of 75mm (Z). With the ability to grow parts in 1 micron increments in Z, the Pico is ideal for high resolution applications such as dental, jewelry and hearing. When building at 50 micron layers, the Pico achieves a build speed of approximately 6mm p/hr.

Mar 22, 2014

The GRID II is a third generation printer from mbot3D. This sturdy metal frame 3d printer has one of the biggest build sizes on the market for desktop 3D Printers, 260x230x200mm. It is available in single head or dual head configuration.

The new printer features an automatic build plate calibration system that guides the user through the setup and then at every print probes the surface and uses the calibrated distance.

The printer also features a glass build plate , and a magnetic build plate holder making it a breeze to remove your build plate to remove your prints, which ensures your build plate calibration is kept in top condition.

The mbot3D GRID II also feature single or dual print fans to make sure your PLA prints are perfect every time!

The printer is bundled with a SD card, and an exclusive tool box with the basic tools need for maintenance of the printer.

South America is also developing more 3d printers. Here is T.Black DLP printer by Trimaker from Argentina.

Specifications:

Build volume: 180 x 235 x 180 mm

Positioning precision: 250 microns

Print speed: 20mm ~25mm / hour depending on the dye and the material.

Materials: rubber, rigid plastics and low viscosity plastic

Weight: 18kg

price: 38,720 Pesos ($4,936)

From company page:

PRINTING TECHNOLOGYThe printer is T.Black based stereolithography technology - the selective polymerization of the liquid resin with light. Unlike other inexpensive printers like MakerBot and RepRap, the Trimaker printer does not use a power head for depositing material during the printing process. Instead of using a head, the T.Black constructed by drawing the print object layer by layer with an optical projection - each layer of the object is actually a photo of each cross section. For each layer, the Trimaker projecting a light pattern on liquid resin solidifies and thus the parts constituting the object. The remaining resin can then be used as input for the next printing.

AdvantageMore reliable technology. T.Black technology is much more reliable because the control of complex mechanical movements is the part that usually fails. · High Resolution. Whether using light to build the object layer by layer allows a degree of much finer and more precise control. The resolution of your printer is more than 10 times higher than other inexpensive printers based on the technologies FDM (fused deposition modeling). The print resolution is one of the most important features that makes the difference between something with the quality of the prototype and the quality of the finished product and this is the main advantage of stereolithography technology. · Control of Color. use of liquid chemicals allows very flexible control of color printing. The user can change color very accurately by adding the proportion of dye which gives exactly the desired color. · Control of Multiple Properties. stereolithography process works with a variety of inputs. The designer can choose from a variety of materials with different degrees of hardness, density, transparency and other properties.

MADE IN ARGENTINAThe fact that both the hardware, software and materials develop in the country, are a great advantage for our clients when thinking about the after sales service, spare parts, supplies and personalized attention. Delivery times, technical support and input supply is greatly reduced on options imported printers today are available in our market. Finally, being a company Argentina, we will make all our releases, product testing, lectures and trainings, first in this market.

I'm not sure what technology tehy are describing in "control of color" part ... probably just a single tone of color in the resin ..

Mar 21, 2014

This printer from Chine is one of those machines where there is only a few CG images and few specifications. In some articles it is mentioned that the company successfully crowd-founded it on some Asian sites.
Its main distinguishing features are Android powered touch screen control unit and ability to store files in "AOD Smartcloud". Now, it would be interesting to see who would trust this cloud service to store some industrial prototypes ... future will tell if this machine will have success ...

The Asterid 1100 takes our base model and adds a Smart controller LCD graphics display with SD card reader, it replaces the power resistor in the hot end with a heater cartridge and it adds a PCB heated bed. The Smart controller LCD display allows the user to control and print from the 3D printer without the need of a computer tethered to the printer (a computer is still needed to slice models into G-code). The heater cartridge heats up faster than the power resistor and in turn will regain heat lost more quickly. A heated bed helps reduce ABS warpage by keeping the model at or above the heat deflection temperature. A heated bed also assists in adhering the part to the build surface. In addition to the Smart controller, the heater cartridge and heated bed the Asterid 1100 also upgrades the print surface to borosilicate glass which provides a ultra flat build surface that has a very low thermal expansion coefficient. A flat print surface helps achieve world class results from a 3D printer due to the fact that the first layer is completely uniform. With three resolution settings (extra fine, fine and course) and a whopping 512 cubic inch build volume, our Asterid 1100 desktop 3D printer is the simplest, fastest and most cost effective tool available for making quality 3D models.

Software:• Open-source software supplied on CD and downloadable from our website, please see our how-to guidesAll printers will ship with a software CD, but the software is also available to download via your internet connection.• Fully configured Pronterface and Slic3r software which uses stereolithography (.STL) files as input• We supply software for Windows computers, but open source software for the Mac & Linux is available

Virtual reality technology is advancing. There are many glasses with augmented / virtual reality interfaces. here is demonstration of Meta glasses that enables user to sculpt 3d model with hand gestures and then control 3d printer via virtual interface.

Mar 19, 2014

Even more low cost wood frame Deltas on Instructables. This one is from user Braden Petno and can me made for less the 400 dollars. There are no 3d printed or CNC produced parts, so it is an advantage if you don't have access to them.

Mar 18, 2014

Ultimaker software just released Cura 14.03. Here is overview from Ultimaker blog:

Setting storageOne of the major changes is that the settings are now stored per machine instead of global for all machines. This means that if you have multiple printers you can keep the optimal settings for each printer with that printer.

TweakAtZ pluginThe “TweakAtZ” plugin has been added by default. This plugin has been made by Steve Morlock, Ricardo Gomez and Stefan Heule. Big thank you to them! Thanks to their community effort you can now change various settings like temperature and speed at certain heights. Giving more control on how your print is made.

New Ultimaker 2 firmwareFor the Ultimaker2 a new firmware is supplied with Cura 14.03. This firmware adds a pause option in the tune menu. So you can pause a print on the Ultimaker2. It also contains fixes for a few small bugs that where reported.

Additional changes in Cura

Improved the LayerView rendering speed

LayerView now updates during slicing, so you can see the result before it is ready to print spotting problems early on